Department of Floriculture and Landscape Architecture, College of Horticulture, Rajendranagar, Hyderabad-500 030, India
*Corresponding author's e-mail: banothusravan@gmail.com, Dr. YSR Horticultural University, Venkataramannagudem, West Godavari, District, Andhrapradesh-534 101, India
Online published on 26 February, 2015.
An investigation was undertaken to study the vase life of tinted spikes of gladiolus cultivar. White prosperity harvested at different stages. The experiment comprised of two factors of which the first one was spikes treated with eight food dyes with 5% concentration and time of immersion for two hours and the second one was various stages of harvest. The results revealed that spikes harvested at stage 1 (1–2 basal florets show colour) had a higher vase life of 8.16 days, maximum time of 8.56 days to fully loose colour after tinting, lowest mean transpirational loss of 29.17 g. spike−1, highest mean diameter of florets (9.21 cm), least decrease of 4.52 g/100g mean percentage of lipids and least decrease of 12.59 g/100g mean percentage of proteins. Benefit cost ratio of tinting the spikes with Lemon yellow, Violet and Orange red was 1.34 while with Kesar yellow, Kalakatta, Blue and Apple green was 1.29. Thus it can be concluded that for tinting the spikes of gladiolus cv. White Prosperity, with greater vase life harvesting the spikes at stage 1(1–2 basal florets show colour) was found to be optimum.
Colour retention, Food dyes, Gladiolus, Tinting, Vase life
